WAR PENSION SOLD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 114, 17 May 1933, Page 11

WAR PENSION SOLD

SUM OF £275 PAID. An admission by a bankrupt tramway employee in Melbourne that he had sold his war pension of 10s 6d a week to the Repatriation Department for a lump sum surprised officials and counsel in the Bankruptcy Court recently in the course of the public examination of Thomas Lindsay Brien, whose estate, was sequestrated on his own petition in September last. Brien told the Court that he bought a house on the Credit Foncier system from the State Savings Bank in 1926 ind paid a deposit of £125. When isked how he obtained the money he laid he sold his war pension. The Registrar: How did you manage :hatt Brien: I sold the pension to the Repatriation . Department, and I was Daid a lump sum of £275. The Registrar: I did not think you lould do that. I never thought that a var pension could be compounded. It leems a peculiar transaction to me. Brien: I think there was some hitch about it afterwards The Registrar: Is the injury in respect to which you received the pension icured! —No. I am attending the department at present. What is the department doing for you—giving you another pension!— No. lam getting free treatment. Brien added that he had used the balance of the £275 to pay some of his debts, but since then he had fallen into debt again. He had been unable to keep up his payments on his house and the bank had seized it Officials of the Repatriation Department explained subsequently that the oractice of making lump sum pension oayments had been discontinued several rears ago as a matter of Ministerial policy. It was followed only if the pension was small and the injury permanent and stationary.